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Monday, December 9, 2013

A Little Perspective

I often have nights where I stay up way too late for no particularly good reason. In fact, I'm having one right now. You can probably relate. Or maybe, could at some point. It's some sort of restlessness. I feel like I should be doing something (and often do) but am not sure what.

This evening (morning, at this point?), I looked over my weekly blog stats (don't judge) and saw three views on a post from 2011. This one, to be exact. It caught my attention because the title was simple and intriguing. I couldn't remember what I'd been writing about, but I was interested enough to click on the link and find out.

It was a post celebrating my first time breaking 2 hours in the half marathon. More important than the actual time, though, was the fact that I learned something deeper. I ran for a long time with no particular goal or vision for my future and one day, I realized I could have more than that. I could do more than that.

I confronted that truth in this post and decided I could either drift aimlessly along in running, maintaining the same love/hate relationship I'd had with it since I started. Or I could set concrete goals and work hard and smart to achieve them. This particular aspect of my drive is one I've long since begun to take for granted. When I think about running before I came to this conclusion, I have a hard time remembering why I stuck with it. Whatever my motivation was in my first three or so years of running, I'm glad I did.

Reading this reminded me that running is about the macro lessons (self reflection, relationships) as much as or more than the micro lessons (times, PRs, etc). I hope I'm still learning as much as I was two years ago. Two years from now, I hope I can say the same.